I'm seeing him as Assassination atm? Edit: ah, he just got the 522 weapon and swapped to assassination. If I had to guess, he was combat either for a specific fight, or because he had a much better weapon setup for combat at the time. I don't know that combat is LOW, but it's LOW-ER than assassination. Edit 2: no, given that he's gemmed for assassination and the armory doesn't have his dagger updated as enchanted, I'm fairly sure he was running assassination before this as well. What am I missing?

Hes combat when I look. And I wouldn't say he is gemmed for assassination. He does have a couple agi/mast gems left but he has a lot of agi/haste gems

Hes combat when I look. And I wouldn't say he is gemmed for assassination. He does have a couple agi/mast gems left but he has a lot of agi/haste gems

He swapped between our posts :P I was looking not long after he got the 522 dagger, and shortly enough after he got the 541 fist that he hadn't swapped yet.

As I was saying, though, at most normal gearing levels (<528), and without assuming you've got 541/535 weapons for one spec and 522/517 for the other, assassination has been pulling ahead by a wide margin. I'm not sure at what point combat should catch up, but 541/535 weapons would go a long way to closing the gap (and with a 19 ilevel gap, prooobably pulls ahead). Note that he already has the 4-piece bonus, which we've mentioned, many times, is an absurd bonus for combat.

I'm seeing him as Assassination atm? Edit: ah, he just got the 522 weapon and swapped to assassination. If I had to guess, he was combat either for a specific fight, or because he had a much better weapon setup for combat at the time. I don't know that combat is LOW, but it's LOW-ER than assassination. Edit 2: no, given that he's gemmed for assassination and the armory doesn't have his dagger updated as enchanted, I'm fairly sure he was running assassination before this as well. What am I missing?

He was combat since week one (with double empress fists), on week two he got HC axe from council and this week he runs with HC TF fists.
No idea what boss he switched for assassination, but was always combat.

He was combat since week one (with double empress fists), on week two he got HC axe from council and this week he runs with HC TF fists.
No idea what boss he switched for assassination, but was always combat.

And he seems to be back to assassination with his 522 . I'll stand corrected that he's been running combat through the tier, but I'd also assume he's had decent/better weapons for combat and the 4p since week one. That said... I'm still not sure what you're trying to argue. That combat is keeping up with assassination before we're near-BiS (~530 gear) on a single target, that Assassin's Resolve is responsible for assassination being ahead due to synergy with +% damage done (your original argument), or...?

I haven't said at any point that combat is terrible, just that, in normal gear, for 99.9% of us, assassination is ahead both mechanically (for non-cleave) and in practice on single target, assuming similar weapons, and is likely to surpass every other class in the game, in addition to combat. Any short trip to WoLogs should show that.

Edit: went back and caught the line "let's not talk about normals" - so we'll stick exclusively to heroic rogues, but I think the world top 100 is still not representative, especially since this thread started directed at normal mode raiding.

Edit 2: WoLogs finally has rankings up for the first 6 heroics, and for everyone running public logs, assassination is still ahead on every fight with the possible exception of Megaera/Council (who only have 1/5 combat rogues), where blade flurry can be used - in other words, it's not single target, which is what I mentioned earlier; cleave is still combat territory.

And he seems to be back to assassination with his 522 . I'll stand corrected that he's been running combat through the tier, but I'd also assume he's had decent/better weapons for combat and the 4p since week one. That said... I'm still not sure what you're trying to argue. That combat is keeping up with assassination before we're near-BiS (~530 gear) on a single target, that Assassin's Resolve is responsible for assassination being ahead due to synergy with +% damage done (your original argument), or...?

I haven't said at any point that combat is terrible, just that, in normal gear, for 99.9% of us, assassination is ahead both mechanically (for non-cleave) and in practice on single target, assuming similar weapons, and is likely to surpass every other class in the game, in addition to combat. Any short trip to WoLogs should show that.

Edit: went back and caught the line "let's not talk about normals" - so we'll stick exclusively to heroic rogues, but I think the world top 100 is still not representative, especially since this thread started directed at normal mode raiding.

Edit 2: WoLogs finally has rankings up for the first 6 heroics, and for everyone running public logs, assassination is still ahead on every fight with the possible exception of Megaera/Council (who only have 1/5 combat rogues), where blade flurry can be used - in other words, it's not single target, which is what I mentioned earlier; cleave is still combat territory.

The gap is much smaller though. That said, there is an immensely small sample size (single digit for some fights) and there's still heavy sampling bias. Standard deviation is technically undefined when the sample size is 1